eloquence in graphic design

I’ve been reading John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce, about the strange eco-vandalism incident in 1997 on Haida Gwaii (aka the Queen Charlotte Islands), northern British Columbia. (If you’re interested, the New Yorker article he distilled from it is a better read.) Mostly I’m indulging a mild obsession with a remote corner of the map — now even more tantalizingly quasi-accessible, of course, via Google Earth and such. But in browsing around, I encountered what might be the most beautiful map I’ve ever seen on the Internet, and certainly one of the most effective in conveying its message.

The map shows the extent of logging, both historical and geographical, on the islands since 1900. It was produced by the Gowgaia Institute, of Queen Charlotte on the islands. Definitely click through for larger versions (without the superposed town names).

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14 comments

Of the defects of Vaillant’s book, the weirdest is that its photo section doesn’t include an image of the Golden Spruce itself. (The cover doesn’t count, being an obvious Photoshop job, probably intended to be read as such.) The only one I’ve found is here.

I revere maps… & mapmakers… as much as humbly bow before the #9 satellite that sends me my daily Rohrschach of the moisture above the Eastern Pacific.
One thing about this particular map that stands out to me (having been a logger in the Coast Range of Oregon) is that they went for the tallest stands that are in the lee of the prevailing onshore flow… and stayed with the larger landmasses. A history of the logging in Puget Sound showed that the ‘easiest’ (ie closest to the water) was logged first. The mechanization was apparently well enough developed to enable them to “cream it”- take the choicest stands- rather than “go for volume” as had been the earlier practice. ^..^

Serendipity and the Internet, they go together like chocolate and peanut butter. In this case, a mind-numbingly verbose frequent commentator has a profound emotional connection with the “remote part of the world” here put on display
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As the Chief Forester’s report says, “Residents of Port Alice, Holberg, Port Hardy and Port McNeill depend to varying degrees on the economic activity generated by TFL 6…… [T]he Port Alice pulpmill depends greatly on wood from TFL 6….”
(See further http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hts/tsr1/ration/tfl/t06/httoc.htm

I grew up in Port Alice. In the years since I left to go to university, I have watched it decline from a reasonably vibrant community towards near-death. Those foolish enough to buy property there are faced with the near-total loss of the investment. It’s a human tragedy, albeit on a small scale.
And this is, for economic-environmental reasons, _insane._ The pulp mill in Port Alice basically uses local waterpower to turn plant fibre into plastic. It ought to be the future! The environmental impact of this, while not small, pales in comparison to that of any place on Earth where large numbers of people actually, you know, live. Mainly because of shortage of plant fibre, though, it is not clear if anyone is going to keep living at Port Alilce.
What has this to do with Haida Gwaii? The long term fibre supply plan for that mill was that after TFL 6 had been “creamed,” (pardon me if you know post-Chinook well enough to find that rude), operations would move to the southern islands of the chain. This was to happen in the early to mid-80s. The technical history is laid out in the Chief Forester’s report:http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hts/tsr1/ration/tfl/t24/httoc.htm

Instead, and what is in neither map nor technical history was a “Save South Moresby” campaign that became the first major act of ecological imperialism of the environmental era. In essence, most of TFL 26 was turned into a deliberately inacessible park. It is, by all accounts, beautiful. (Frankly, though, I have not heard that it is more beautiful than thousands of other miles of unprotected British Columbia coastline.)
It’s also visited by, at best, a few hundred people a year. Ironically, most of them are the kind of locals who work in logging and pulp mills, because they’re close by, have the boats, and enjoy clamming and deer hunting. (And poaching geoducks and sea urchins. But that’s another story.)

For the rest of humanity, and in particular the victors in the great Save South Moresby Campaign, it exists as a romantic encounter with a map. I won’t condemn that kind of thing, as I do it myself. (Kerguelen’s Land FTW.) But there’s also a real, deleterious, and mischievous impact on a few hardworking families in Port Alice.
In conclusion, “won’t someone please think of the children.”

Please don’t mis-use the term “eco-terrorism”. The object of terrorism is to harm people (not trees) for the express purpose of making large numbers of other people afraid for their lives.

This term is much abused in public discourse, often being applied to Earth First!, Animal Liberation Front and various other monkeywrenchers whose first rule is “harm no people or animals”.

Whatever the motive for cutting down the tree, I suspect the vandal/thug/opportunist (not terrorist) probably thought very little of the effect on the tribe, who seem more sad than frightened of physical harm.

Good point, Chris — I’ve moderated the term. According to Vaillant, Hadwin did destroy the tree to send a message (protesting logging), but he didn’t understand the value of the tree to the Haida.

And thanks for the comment, Erik. I’m not competent to take up these issues in detail. My understanding from Vaillant (a shaky source, I think) is that the communities on the islands were scourged by disease in the later 19th century — losing on the order of 90% of their population — and that the logging wasn’t sustaining living communities there anyway.

No kidding about Kerguelen — long ago I worked in an office with a huge topo of those islands on the wall.

Of course the communal relationship of the proposed log cut in TFL24 to the predominantly Native Haida of Haida Gwaii, who live on Moresby Island is very different from that to the mill workers on northern Vancouver Island and elsewhere.
That said, I do think we can go too far in putting their fates in separate boxes, although to defend my position I’d have to put on my tinfoil hat and rant about the myth of race again. (And open up a new line of attack on the “numbers from nowhere” story, to cite the always citable David Henige.

I take the broad point, Erik, that resource extraction does have real benefits even in the region. (Not to mention to the distant exploiters, like me, sitting in a wooden house in San Francisco.) I don’t think the argument against logging implied by this poster fails to take this into account — in the most recent version, they’re quite explicit that the most of the best has already been taken.

Interesting that this map/conversation should provoke mention of Kerguelen Island, which is almost exactly on the opposite side of the globe from the Queen Charlottes.
As someone who worked as a logger, commercial fisherman, cedar scrounge, etc- ie most of the “dead-end” resource extractive industries peculiar to Greater Ecotopia, I must appreciate the onset of “Ecological Imperialism”, myself… mostly because of exposure to what it’s like to see its opposite number (the direct results of “corporate feudalism”) in place in the region. The cultural implications (when they’re ONLY implications, eg the management of fisheries prior to the Boldt decision) are another story- or “stories”, of course. ^..^

Getting the policy balance right seems very hard. Even considering the questions solipsistically, I’d say I benefit both from having trees cut down for me and from having vast tracts of useless unexploited forest standing damp distant and inaccessible.

BTW, Wikipedia says Kerguelen is antipodal to a spot in the Great Plains. I haven’t tried drilling a hole myself to verify this.